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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Whoops.

It was fun while it lasted, but it's time to put an end to the Kumozaru Project. Sorry to those who started enjoying it, I know I really was, but I've been informed that some people are frowning upon my activities.

I'm certainly not here to cause trouble. I didn't realize that Yoru no Kumozaru had English-language rights (by which someone merely owns them somewhere, not that there are any plans for it to be actually released, unfortunately), and I do believe that a translation is one's own intellectual property (that I simply wanted to share with some people on the internet! I'm innocent, I tell 'ya!), but again, I did this without looking into any of the rules of the game. It was just a fun project for me to help practice my Japanese and translation skills. Like I said, it was fun while it lasted, and my blog is going to look pretty empty from now on, but them's the breaks. I had just been going over some new content ideas for the site anyway, so Wednesday Afternoon Picnic will still go on, in one way or another. I hope those of you who started coming here will continue to do so. I do suggest that anyone studying Japanese and with an interest in Murakami should consider buying a copy of Yoru No Kumozaru for themselves so they can enjoy the stories that I've come to really love.

8 comments:

That's too bad! I was just starting to read through all of the entries... I wonder how they came across your blog... Anyway I'm looking forward to whatever other projects you have lined up! When will you be coming to Japan?

You can put me on your blogroll if I can put you on mine (when I make it)!

g dawg: Oh, I got an email. They introduced themselves as the representatives of HM and that my unauthorized translations are amount to copyright infringement and that they need to be taken down immediately.

TE: I'm coming at the end of March until July. Although you must be coming home earlier than that, like May?

I'll admit it, I was googling myself, and I did notice that this website themillions.com wrote a little blurb about me. They're a pretty huge website about literature, and a bunch of people twittered about it from there... I was pretty happy about all the attention, but of course that made it a lot more likely to be found by these people too. Oh well.

Thing is, though, in this day and age, a few translations here and there on the internet aren't going to affect sales at all. If anything, it's all publicity. Southpark give away their shows free online, and loads of musicians these days too, via Youtube. When's Mr Murakami (who could probably afford to be a lot more generous than the rest of us anyway...) going to wake up to this?

I do agree that this site would hardly make a ripple in the sales puddle. I have a feeling that he has better things to do than care about my little translations; I doubt he has any clue at all. I think it's 100% the management company. At least that's what I think; although I guess I'd prefer to keep my image of him nice and clean. But who knows really. It's too bad but I'll soldier on.